1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device management system which manages operating statuses of devices, a management apparatus, a device management method, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in order to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, the amount of power consumption at the time of use of devices such as printers and multi-function peripherals (MFPs) are required to be reduced. For this purpose, it is required to allow users to recognize the power consumption amounts at the time of use of devices (that is, to “visualize” the power consumptions). For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-120003 (reference 1) discloses the following technique. That is, in a system including a plurality of copying machines connected to a network, since each copying machine consumes electrical power due to energization when it is in a communication ready state, a time period of the communication ready state is calculated with reference to a monitor log, a power consumption of each copying machine is calculated based on the calculated time period, and the calculated power consumption value is output. According to this technique, since, for example, monthly logs of power consumption amounts of respective copying machines can be recognized, when a power consumption of this month of a certain copying machine becomes larger than previous months, the furtherance of power savings can be evoked for respective users of an office.
However, with the system described in reference 1, since a management apparatus attempts to communicate with devices to determine whether or not each device is in a communication ready state, power consumption amounts that consider more detailed device statuses cannot be calculated. Since the management apparatus periodically attempts to communicate with devices, a communication load is heavy. Furthermore, this communication may often awake the device from a power saving mode to a normal mode, and an environment load becomes heavier in this case.